Dublin City University

About: Dublin City University is a education organization based out in Dublin, Ireland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Machine translation. The organization has 5904 authors who have published 17178 publications receiving 389376 citations. The organization is also known as: National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin & DCU.

‘SWEATCH’: A Wearable Platform for Harvesting and Analysing Sweat Sodium Content

Abstract: A platform for harvesting and analysing the sodium content of sweat in real time is presented. One is a ‘watch’ format in which the sampling and fluidic system, electrodes, circuitry and battery are arranged vertically, while in the other ‘pod’ format, the electronics and battery components, and the fluidics electrodes are arranged horizontally. The platforms are designed to be securely attached to the skin using a velcro strap. Sweat enters into the device through a sampling orifice and passes over solid-state sodium-selective and reference electrodes and into a storage area containing a high capacity adsorbent material. The liquid movement is entirely driven by capillary action, and the flow rate through the device can be mediated through variation of the width of a fluidic channel linking the electrodes to the sample storage area. Changing the width dimension through 750, 500 and 250 µm produces flow rates of 38.20, 21.48 and 6.61 µL/min, respectively. Variation of the sweat uptake rate and the storage volume capacity enables the duration of usage to be varied according to the needs of the user. The devices can be easily disassembled to replace the electrodes and the high capacity adsorbant material. The storage sweat is available for subsequent measurement of the total volume of sweat harvested and the average concentration of sodium over the period of use. Signals generated by the electrodes are passed to a custom designed electronics board with high input impedance to accurately capture the voltage. The real-time data is transmitted wirelessly using incorporated Bluetooth circuitry to a remote basestation (laptop, mobile phone, tablet) for data visualization and storage in standard formats. Results obtained during trials over a period of ca. 30 minutes controlled exercise are consistent with previously published data, showing a gradual relatively slow increase of the sodium concentration in the sweat during this period.

Eye tracking as an MT evaluation technique

Abstract: Eye tracking has been used successfully as a technique for measuring cognitive load in reading, psycholinguistics, writing, language acquisition etc. for some time now. Its application as a technique for measuring the reading ease of MT output has not yet, to our knowledge, been tested. We report here on a preliminary study testing the use and validity of an eye tracking methodology as a means of semi-automatically evaluating machine translation output. 50 French machine translated sentences, 25 rated as excellent and 25 rated as poor in an earlier human evaluation, were selected. Ten native speakers of French were instructed to read the MT sentences for comprehensibility. Their eye gaze data were recorded non-invasively using a Tobii 1750 eye tracker. The average gaze time and fixation count were found to be higher for the "bad" sentences, while average fixation duration and pupil dilations were not found to be substantially different for output rated as good and output rated as bad. Comparisons between HTER scores and eye gaze data were also found to correlate well with gaze time and fixation count, but not with pupil dilation and fixation duration. We conclude that the eye tracking data, in particular gaze time and fixation count, correlate reasonably well with human evaluation of MT output but fixation duration and pupil dilation may be less reliable indicators of reading difficulty for MT output. We also conclude that eye tracking has promise as a semi-automatic MT evaluation technique, which does not require bi-lingual knowledge, and which can potentially tap into the end users' experience of machine translation output.

The Virial Balance of Clumps and Cores in Molecular Clouds

Abstract: We study the instantaneous virial balance of CCs in numerical models of MCs. The models represent a range of magnetic field strengths in MCs from subcritical to nonmagnetic regimes. We identify CCs at different density thresholds and calculate, for each object, the terms that enter the EVT. A CC is gravitationally bound when the gravitational term in the EVT is larger than the amount for the system to be virialized, which is more stringent than the condition that it be large enough to make the total volume energy negative. We also calculate other quantities used to indicate the state of gravitational boundedness: Jeans number Jc, mass-to-magnetic flux ratio μc, and virial parameter αvir. Our results suggest the following: (1) CCs are dynamical out-of-equilibrium structures. (2) The surface energies are of the same order as their volume counterparts. (3) CCs are either in the process of being compressed or dispersed by the velocity field. Yet, not all CCs that have a compressive net kinetic energy are gravitationally bound. (4) There is no one-to-one correspondence between the states of gravitational boundedness as described by the virial analysis or by the other indicators. In general, in the virial analysis, only the inner regions of the objects are gravitationally bound, whereas Jc, αvir, and μc estimates tend to show that they are more bound at the lowest threshold levels and more magnetically supercritical. (5) We observe, in the nonmagnetic simulation, the existence of a bound core with structural and dynamical properties that resemble those of Barnard 68. This suggests that such cores can form in a larger MC and then be confined by the warm gas of a newly formed, nearby H II region.